Valve has just announced it will start selling applications through Steam. "The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you. More Software titles will be added in an ongoing fashion following the September 5th launch, and developers will be welcome to submit Software titles via Steam Greenlight." I feel like a broken record at this point, but guys and girls, Valve is going to release specifications for a 'Steambox'. A set of minimum specifications a Linux or Windows machine has to adhere to, either self-built or by an OEM. Steam pre-installed, can be used as regular PC and as a console. With Windows 8 locking itself down, this is their only option - and I applaud it.

No he's telling the truth, nobody is gonna give you Photoshop 5 for free because you bought Photoshop 4 so a lot of the package management simply won't work. Linux software is free as in beer so nobody cares if its in the repos, when that software is $600+ you damned right they care.

I've been using it for ages and frankly don't have a single updater running in windows as filehippo takes care of all that for me. For new installs I recommend ninite as it takes care of all the initial installs with a fully automated "check boxes, click run" that can't be simpler. http://ninite.com/

But you can't expect to have a Linux style package manager unless you want to tie it to your CC and have it just taken out of your account because most of the popular software on Windows is paid apps.

The question is how are the Linux guys gonna like DRM and paid apps as that is pretty much Steam in a nutshell. Sure i love it and its certainly nicer than SecuROM or Starforce but it IS DRM and every app that goes through it will be using DRM as well. This is why I think the goal will be a Steambox, we're already seeing in the forums how much DRM hate the Linux community has so I seriously doubt valve will make much off that already tiny market, but a Steambox will be just another console where DRM is expected.